Indian Covid Variant Found In 5 Cases In Colorado

Fox News: Colorado Identifies Indian Coronavirus Variant In At Least 5 Residents
Health officials in Colorado have identified five cases of a coronavirus variant first discovered in India. The cases involve five females in Mesa County who are all from different households, according to a news release posted Thursday. Officials said all individuals are between the ages of 30 and 65 years old and that the cases were identified through the sequencing of test samples. The variant, identified as B.1.617.2, is considered a "variant of interest (VOI)." (Hein, 5/8)

Reuters: Around 20 People In France Detected With Indian COVID Variant -Health Minister
Around 20 people in France have been currently detected with the variant of COVID-19 first found in India, French Health Minister Olivier Veran told LCI TV on Monday. The World Health Organisation has described the Indian COVID variant as a "variant of interest", suggesting it may have mutations that would make the virus more transmissible, cause more severe disease or evade vaccine immunity. (5/10)

NPR: How Contagious Is The Coronavirus Variant In India?
Back in the fall, Tom Wenseleers made a bold claim on Twitter. He tweeted that the new coronavirus variant emerging in the U.K. was more transmissible — or could spread more quickly — than over versions of the virus. "I posted a graph [on Twitter] showing the U.K. variant had a transmission advantage over the other types of the virus," says Wenseleers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Leuven in Belgium. At first, many scientists didn't believe his analysis. Many people thought the big COVID-19 surge in England was due to holiday travel and shopping, he says. But after many follow-up studies, Wenseleers' take proved correct. The variant first detected in the U.K., called B.1.1.7, is indeed more transmissible and likely the most contagious version of the virus known. (Doucleff, 5/7)

In other updates on the spread of the coronavirus —

ABC News: Oregon Church Won't Close After COVID-19 Outbreak Infected 74 Members, Pastor Says 
Returning to the pulpit after a COVID-19 outbreak infected him, his wife and 72 members of their congregation, the senior pastor of an Oregon church said Sunday that he will not kowtow to pressure to close the doors to the house of worship. Pastor Scott Erickson of the Peoples Church in Salem, Oregon, began his Mother's Day sermon by addressing the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in his church and throughout the state. (Hutchinson, 5/9)

The Baltimore Sun: COVID Outbreak Hits Baltimore Jail Even As State Ramps Up Inmate Vaccinations; Advocates Turn To Court Seeking Information
A COVID outbreak has struck Baltimore’s jail even as 70% of all Maryland prison inmates have received at least one vaccine dose, according to state records and court filings by the American Civil Liberties Union. The state’s failure to provide facility-specific infection and vaccination data is hindering efforts to understand what’s happening inside the jail or hold officials accountable, the ACLU claims. The filing is the latest in a series since last April, weeks into the pandemic, seeking better protections for Maryland inmates, and is an extension of a decades-old lawsuit against the state over prisoner civil rights. (Jackson, 5/10)

Bloomberg: CDC Limits Reviews Of Vaccinated But Infected, Spurring Concerns
Federal health officials this month decided to limit how they monitor vaccinated people who have been infected with Covid-19, drawing concern from some scientists who say that may mean missing needed data showing why and how it happens. At the end of April, more than 9,000 Americans were reported to be infected after being vaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While that’s a tiny percentage of the 95 million people fully inoculated at the time, researchers still want to find out what specific mechanisms may be spurring the infections. (Chen, 5/9)

The New York Times: From The Wastewater Drain, Solid Pandemic Data
Marc Johnson saw trouble in the water. Dr. Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri, had spent much of 2020 studying sewage, collecting wastewater from all over the state and analyzing it for fragments of the coronavirus. People with Covid-19 shed the virus in their stool, and as the coronavirus spread throughout Missouri, more and more of it began to appear in the state’s wastewater. In January, Dr. Johnson spotted something new in his water samples: traces of B.1.1.7, a more contagious variant that was first detected in Britain. (Anthes, 5/7)

In other covid news —

The Washington Post: 750 Covid-19 Victims In New York Still Stored In Refrigerated Trucks A Year Into Pandemic 
As New York emerged as the center of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, the overwhelmed city began storing the bodies of victims in refrigerated trucks along the Brooklyn waterfront. More than a year later, hundreds remain in the makeshift morgues on the 39th Street Pier in Sunset Park. (Shammas, 5/9)

CIDRAP: Obesity Tied To Higher COVID-19 Death Rates In Men
Hospitalized men with COVID-19 had higher in-hospital death rates if they were in obesity classes 2 and 3 (body mass index [BMI] of 35 to 40 kg/m2, respectively) compared with men in a normal-weight group, according to a study yesterday in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases. (5/7)

Stat: With Long Covid, History May Be Repeating Itself Among People Of Color
It’s well-known now that people of color have shouldered a disproportionate burden in the Covid-19 pandemic. Now researchers and clinicians are increasingly concerned that history is repeating itself in the case of long Covid. Long Covid — one name for the mysterious multitude of problems that persist after Covid-19 infections have cleared — affects all populations to some degree; it also afflicts people regardless of whether they had mild or even no symptoms, or needed ICU care to survive. (Cooney, 5/10)